A few days ago I discovered that Bril fountain pens and fountain pen inks are available from the company’s website at www.brilindia.com. I was delighted because I have heard of Bril ink for as long as I can remember but never had a chance to use it. I have bought and used Sulekha, Camlin and Chelpark inks but never found Bril ink with the stationers in Calcutta. I knew Bril is available in south India and I have been there twice on...

That question troubles every fountain pen lover in India and abroad. In this age of the electronic devices, writing in longhand is perceived to be an ancient habit. Even when we have to scribble a word or two, there is the ubiquitous ball point pen at hand. Fountain pens are considered an aberration, used only by eccentrics. It is a piece of antique craft that is cumbersome and difficult to use and maintain. Fountain pens have disappeared from...

[prisna-google-website-translator] The Clear Demonstrator is a distinctive genre of fountain pens. These pens were once used by pen dealers to “demonstrate” the features of upcoming fountain pen models to potential customers. Also called Skeleton pens, these were especially useful in providing the future owner of the pen an opportunity to observe the filling mechanism, the feed and the nib as well as other components inside a...

It is said that “when once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen” [Samuel Lover (1797-1868)]. For me, however, and especially of late, the fountain pen serves as a cure whenever the itch of sketching comes over me. I am a novice artist, a learner, and I have been using all sorts of fountain pens for my scribbles and doodles. So I was rather intrigued when I found a fountain pen...

In Chapter 15 of Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby, Fanny Squeers, the ill-tempered daughter of the violent headmaster of Dotheboys Halls writes a letter in which she gives a hilariously exaggerated account to Nicholas’s uncle of her father’s beating by his ‘nevew’. Fanny writes, “Sir, My pa requests me to write to you, the doctors considering it doubtful whether he will ever recuvver the use of his legs...

One of the pleasures of student life, especially if you had been a school student in Calcutta in the 70’s of the last century, was the colourful fountain pens that you were allowed to use in your high school days. So fountain pens make me nostalgic and till this day I have not been able to ignore them. Indeed I fall in love with one fountain pen or the other almost every day. The pens I refer to here are not expensive at all. These are...